As I mentioned earlier on my blog, we had to do a contractual and legal assignment and part of that was based on the Stig however there was another part about Miriam O’Reilly and how she was dropped from the BBC programme Countryfile when it got scheduled for a different time.
She took it to court to do with ageism and sexism and she won the tribunal. We had to look into the age range of the presenters on the BBC and I found that the males were always older than the females and sometimes the age gap was quite big however they always had quite young presenters.
On the BBC they have quite a wide age gap between their male and female presenters. They have always hired older males than the females and there is nearly always quite a big age gap between the males and females. According to the BBC website in 1950 the female presenters’ average age was thirty two years and seven months where as the male presenters average age was forty six years and nine months. This is quite a big age gap and since then some of the age gaps have also been quite big however a few have been quite small. For example in 1980 the female presenters average age was forty two years and one month where as the male presenters average age was forty four years and one month, this is one of the few small age gaps but generally the males are quite a lot older than the females. They don’t seem to hire presenters over the age of fifty and this could be due to ageism.
Using some Radio Times listings some researchers looked at over 800 performers and presenters from 1950 to 2000 and 2010. They found that the average age for on-screen women varied between 32 and 42 where as the men varied from 38 to 47.
It seems that they want to have presenters that aren’t really near the age of 50. They take off presenters over a certain age and replace them with younger ones. This isn’t fair as the slightly older presenters are still capable of doing their job well; their age shouldn’t affect their career and be the deciding factor of whether or not they keep their job.
